More Realignment on the Way?

[Bill Marsh]

NJ Redman, I implied or you inferred?

If that was what I intended, I would have said so and would say so now. You read into my post what you wanted to read into it.

And when did honest analysis become "gloom and doom," Pollyanna? No one's a bigger booster of the Big East than I am. But the conference is not going to move forward by putting its head in the sand and acting like everything is just fine.

[MUPanther]

[quote="TheBall"

And another thing, while half a billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, over ten years, with 100+ games per year, it is not that much per game. The average cost of a commercial on shows that garner ratings in the low decimals still costs a few thousand dollars, and they run a decent number of commercials during the game. It's not like a 0.0 rating means they lost their investment in the game. And the goal is for that investment to be paying off down the line, not just the first few yrs. (an espn commercial costs $20k for 30 seconds. Most lower rated cable shows are in the $5-10k range, and a fox national broadcast commercial is much more). Heck, they even make money on the pre-game shows and the inside the big east show. Fox is not losing in this deal, we are growing together.[/quote]

Great post! Fox is paying the Big East $41 million a year, which is less money than FS1 will be paying for TV rights for MLS soccer and that's far less games. Plus, FOX sublicense Big East game to CBS for 5 years, which makes them money.

[Boyee]

I don't think Notre Dame will ever join the ACC for football more than the agreement they have now. If the ACC goes to 16, Connecticut will be the school, unless BC blocks it.

[NJRedman]

NJ Redman, I implied or you inferred?

If that was what I intended, I would have said so and would say so now. You read into my post what you wanted to read into it.

And when did honest analysis become "gloom and doom," Pollyanna? No one's a bigger booster of the Big East than I am. But the conference is not going to move forward by putting its head in the sand and acting like everything is just fine.

Fox took a gamble on the Big East, betting that the league would do for their new cable sports channel what it did for ESPN 35 years ago

Thats implying that they expect us to be the back bone property who makes the channel a household name. Thats what we did 35 years ago.

Honest analysis is always welcome, but it better be grounded in reality. Your remarks were not. It's 10 years from when our contract runs out, saying we will be dropped or downgraded is gloom and doom.

[ohiohsbball]

I may be going a little off topic here, but I see now way the BIG signs on with Fox Sports 1. I would love to see that to help FS1 ratings, but I honestly right now just don't see that happening. The BIG right now has the best of both worlds... BIG tournament championship game on CBS along with other regular season games on Sunday, football BIG championship game on FOX, and then numerous regular season football games on ABC and ESPN. Why in the world would the BIG leave that to sign on with FS1, which like it or not, right now has a very uncertain future? I read a lot of posts and see a lot of people getting hopes about signing on with the BIG, but I honestly don't see it. When it comes to money making, Jim Delaney may be the best conference commissioner around, and he is going to where viewership and dollar signs are right now, and unfortunately that is not FS1. During football, BTN had more viewers than FS1; he's not going to kill his own network. If we are lucky enough to get the BIG on FS1, do they renegotiate with tv providers? Look what happened with AT@T and Fox Sports.

As far as expansion goes, no one really has a clue but that is the fun of message boards and internet; speculation. I've stated several times that I think within the first 3-5 years of the conference Dayton and St. Louis would join us. I just don't see UCONN dropping football and Gonzaga is a pipe dream.

To me, the real interesting thing is what will happen to the BIG 12? They got the shaft in football last year, so do they expand? Uconn, Cincinnati, Memphis? Or, does the BIG12 fall apart if the BIG and Pac12 to to the "mega" conference of 16 teams?

One thing for sure, realignment is no where near dead and the next 3 years are going to be interesting.

[stever20]

I may be going a little off topic here, but I see now way the BIG signs on with Fox Sports 1. I would love to see that to help FS1 ratings, but I honestly right now just don't see that happening. The BIG right now has the best of both worlds... BIG tournament championship game on CBS along with other regular season games on Sunday, football BIG championship game on FOX, and then numerous regular season football games on ABC and ESPN. Why in the world would the BIG leave that to sign on with FS1, which like it or not, right now has a very uncertain future? I read a lot of posts and see a lot of people getting hopes about signing on with the BIG, but I honestly don't see it. When it comes to money making, Jim Delaney may be the best conference commissioner around, and he is going to where viewership and dollar signs are right now, and unfortunately that is not FS1. During football, BTN had more viewers than FS1; he's not going to kill his own network. If we are lucky enough to get the BIG on FS1, do they renegotiate with tv providers? Look what happened with AT@T and Fox Sports.

As far as expansion goes, no one really has a clue but that is the fun of message boards and internet; speculation. I've stated several times that I think within the first 3-5 years of the conference Dayton and St. Louis would join us. I just don't see UCONN dropping football and Gonzaga is a pipe dream.

To me, the real interesting thing is what will happen to the BIG 12? They got the shaft in football last year, so do they expand? Uconn, Cincinnati, Memphis? Or, does the BIG12 fall apart if the BIG and Pac12 to to the "mega" conference of 16 teams?

One thing for sure, realignment is no where near dead and the next 3 years are going to be interesting.

I agree with the Big Ten. I think best case FS1 gets half of the current ESPN package for football(about 20 games), and then maybe a package for basketball- won't be all that much because they aren't leaving CBS and they aren't going to leave ESPN either. Got to remember- they don't have much basketball outside the Big Ten Network. This week 14 games and ESPN has all of 3 games and CBS has 1 game. Big Ten has 10 games. That's not going to change much with the new deal. The package that FS1 got won't be the life saver that folks on here would want it to be... Big Ten isn't going to kill off their network to save FS1.

As far as expansion, I don't see St Louis as an option until they get even viable on the court. Right now their RPI is 255, last in the A10. It would be a huge mistake to add them right now. If we were going to add them, it would have already happened when they were competitive.

[DudeAnon]

I may be going a little off topic here, but I see now way the BIG signs on with Fox Sports 1. I would love to see that to help FS1 ratings, but I honestly right now just don't see that happening. The BIG right now has the best of both worlds... BIG tournament championship game on CBS along with other regular season games on Sunday, football BIG championship game on FOX, and then numerous regular season football games on ABC and ESPN. Why in the world would the BIG leave that to sign on with FS1, which like it or not, right now has a very uncertain future? I read a lot of posts and see a lot of people getting hopes about signing on with the BIG, but I honestly don't see it. When it comes to money making, Jim Delaney may be the best conference commissioner around, and he is going to where viewership and dollar signs are right now, and unfortunately that is not FS1. During football, BTN had more viewers than FS1; he's not going to kill his own network. If we are lucky enough to get the BIG on FS1, do they renegotiate with tv providers? Look what happened with AT@T and Fox Sports.

As far as expansion goes, no one really has a clue but that is the fun of message boards and internet; speculation. I've stated several times that I think within the first 3-5 years of the conference Dayton and St. Louis would join us. I just don't see UCONN dropping football and Gonzaga is a pipe dream.

To me, the real interesting thing is what will happen to the BIG 12? They got the shaft in football last year, so do they expand? Uconn, Cincinnati, Memphis? Or, does the BIG12 fall apart if the BIG and Pac12 to to the "mega" conference of 16 teams?

One thing for sure, realignment is no where near dead and the next 3 years are going to be interesting.

1) Don't say "we". If Dayton gets an invite, then you can say it.
2) Football is so expensive that for any school that is left out of the major conferences it is basically a matter of time until they have to either shut down or dramatically scale back their expenses.
3) Money makes the world goes around and everyone has a number. Coincidentally, Murdoch has quite a bit of money.

[stever20]

I may be going a little off topic here, but I see now way the BIG signs on with Fox Sports 1. I would love to see that to help FS1 ratings, but I honestly right now just don't see that happening. The BIG right now has the best of both worlds... BIG tournament championship game on CBS along with other regular season games on Sunday, football BIG championship game on FOX, and then numerous regular season football games on ABC and ESPN. Why in the world would the BIG leave that to sign on with FS1, which like it or not, right now has a very uncertain future? I read a lot of posts and see a lot of people getting hopes about signing on with the BIG, but I honestly don't see it. When it comes to money making, Jim Delaney may be the best conference commissioner around, and he is going to where viewership and dollar signs are right now, and unfortunately that is not FS1. During football, BTN had more viewers than FS1; he's not going to kill his own network. If we are lucky enough to get the BIG on FS1, do they renegotiate with tv providers? Look what happened with AT@T and Fox Sports.

As far as expansion goes, no one really has a clue but that is the fun of message boards and internet; speculation. I've stated several times that I think within the first 3-5 years of the conference Dayton and St. Louis would join us. I just don't see UCONN dropping football and Gonzaga is a pipe dream.

To me, the real interesting thing is what will happen to the BIG 12? They got the shaft in football last year, so do they expand? Uconn, Cincinnati, Memphis? Or, does the BIG12 fall apart if the BIG and Pac12 to to the "mega" conference of 16 teams?

One thing for sure, realignment is no where near dead and the next 3 years are going to be interesting.

1) Don't say "we". If Dayton gets an invite, then you can say it.
2) Football is so expensive that for any school that is left out of the major conferences it is basically a matter of time until they have to either shut down or dramatically scale back their expenses.
3) Money makes the world goes around and everyone has a number. Coincidentally, Murdoch has quite a bit of money.

With #3 you are assuming that ESPN doesn't have money. Can pretty much guarantee you that Delaney will give ESPN a chance to match whatever Fox comes up with.

[ohiohsbball]

I may be going a little off topic here, but I see now way the BIG signs on with Fox Sports 1. I would love to see that to help FS1 ratings, but I honestly right now just don't see that happening. The BIG right now has the best of both worlds... BIG tournament championship game on CBS along with other regular season games on Sunday, football BIG championship game on FOX, and then numerous regular season football games on ABC and ESPN. Why in the world would the BIG leave that to sign on with FS1, which like it or not, right now has a very uncertain future? I read a lot of posts and see a lot of people getting hopes about signing on with the BIG, but I honestly don't see it. When it comes to money making, Jim Delaney may be the best conference commissioner around, and he is going to where viewership and dollar signs are right now, and unfortunately that is not FS1. During football, BTN had more viewers than FS1; he's not going to kill his own network. If we are lucky enough to get the BIG on FS1, do they renegotiate with tv providers? Look what happened with AT@T and Fox Sports.

As far as expansion goes, no one really has a clue but that is the fun of message boards and internet; speculation. I've stated several times that I think within the first 3-5 years of the conference Dayton and St. Louis would join us. I just don't see UCONN dropping football and Gonzaga is a pipe dream.

To me, the real interesting thing is what will happen to the BIG 12? They got the shaft in football last year, so do they expand? Uconn, Cincinnati, Memphis? Or, does the BIG12 fall apart if the BIG and Pac12 to to the "mega" conference of 16 teams?

One thing for sure, realignment is no where near dead and the next 3 years are going to be interesting.

1) Don't say "we". If Dayton gets an invite, then you can say it.
2) Football is so expensive that for any school that is left out of the major conferences it is basically a matter of time until they have to either shut down or dramatically scale back their expenses.
3) Money makes the world goes around and everyone has a number. Coincidentally, Murdoch has quite a bit of money.

Your post makes no sense..first of all, when I said "we," I refer to this as a basketball conference. I am not now nor have I ever been a Dayton fan, although I'd rather see them succeed because of Xavier because of the Xavier fan base. I root for them because they are a local team, but not a fan.

2). Are you trying to say that basically any school not in a major conference or a p5 conference will shut down football? Good luck to the entire MAC or Mountain West..I feel sorry for those schools because according to you, football will not be a sport for them. UCONN made it to a BCS bowl in the not so distant memory; them shutting down football this soon is ridiculous.

[NJRedman]

I may be going a little off topic here, but I see now way the BIG signs on with Fox Sports 1. I would love to see that to help FS1 ratings, but I honestly right now just don't see that happening. The BIG right now has the best of both worlds... BIG tournament championship game on CBS along with other regular season games on Sunday, football BIG championship game on FOX, and then numerous regular season football games on ABC and ESPN. Why in the world would the BIG leave that to sign on with FS1, which like it or not, right now has a very uncertain future? I read a lot of posts and see a lot of people getting hopes about signing on with the BIG, but I honestly don't see it. When it comes to money making, Jim Delaney may be the best conference commissioner around, and he is going to where viewership and dollar signs are right now, and unfortunately that is not FS1. During football, BTN had more viewers than FS1; he's not going to kill his own network. If we are lucky enough to get the BIG on FS1, do they renegotiate with tv providers? Look what happened with AT@T and Fox Sports.

As far as expansion goes, no one really has a clue but that is the fun of message boards and internet; speculation. I've stated several times that I think within the first 3-5 years of the conference Dayton and St. Louis would join us. I just don't see UCONN dropping football and Gonzaga is a pipe dream.

To me, the real interesting thing is what will happen to the BIG 12? They got the shaft in football last year, so do they expand? Uconn, Cincinnati, Memphis? Or, does the BIG12 fall apart if the BIG and Pac12 to to the "mega" conference of 16 teams?

One thing for sure, realignment is no where near dead and the next 3 years are going to be interesting.

It's very simple. Money. If Fox offers them enough they will sign, just like the Pac-12 and Big XII did. Also the B1G and Fox are already partners on the BTN. They are already partnered on that and their championship game but you can't see them sign on with Fox? The Big Ten isn't tied to ESPN and people are going to watch no matter what channel they are on. Their alumni base is deep in every major city in the country. Fox knows it needs this property and will open up the check book to get it.

Also a little backstory. When Delany pitched the BTN to ESPN they shut him down and he walked out of the meeting and went to Fox who gladly accepted. Now every conference wants their own network and ESPN is falling over themselves to give them one.